Once you’ve finished the read-through, you’re ready to start editing! *insert applause sound effects*
Before you jump in at page one and start fixing every little thing, stop and take into consideration the list you made during your read-through. It’s organized from big problems to little problems. Your macro-edit is the beginning of this list: all the bird’s eye view issues that affect the whole book. Start by fixing these. Often, this will result in you deleting entire paragraphs, scenes, or even chapters. That’s why you don’t want to start with little tweaks—there’s no point in polishing the details of a sentence if you end up deleting it, and it wastes your precious writing time!
As you work through the bigger changes, there are four main areas to keep in mind. Any problem that lasts throughout the book will likely have a root in one of these four focal points. You might want to read through your book once for every area, focusing on the consistency and strength of each.
This post is part of the Editing Your Novel series. Click through to read about the read-through, beta readers, and the micro-edit.
Plot
Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, it’s important to examine each plot point and make sure they follow logically. Is each point linked together through a natural cause and effect? Each scene should either be an emotional reaction to the action of the previous scene, or up the ante with more action. Try to look at it with the eyes of a typical reader: Does the pace drag at some point? You may have too many emotion-heavy scenes in a row. Does it seem confusing or overwhelming anywhere? You might need to add in some scenes that grow the characters and allow them to express emotion to decompress in between the action.
Characters
Looking for consistency in your characters doesn’t mean they shouldn’t change—in fact, it’s going to be a pretty boring story if they haven’t. But the progression of their character arc should make sense. If your 
character started off selfish, there should be clear incidents throughout the plot that push them into growing and becoming more selfless, so that by the end of the story, the change they’ve gone through feels natural.
Within each scene, the characters’ reactions and dialogue should also be consistent. One of the best ways to do a quick test is to whittle down the core of your character into a few words. Something like “sarcastic, guarded, control-freak.” In every scene, examine if your character’s interactions line up with this central truth. Depending on who they’re interacting with and what point in the story they’re at, some of these words will hold a bigger sway than others. Your character may be going through an arc that teaches them to trust people, so by the end of the story, they shouldn’t be guarded in their interactions. But they might always be sarcastic. (Aren’t all the best characters?)
Theme
Theme is what connects your plot and your characters. It defines how your characters change and why the plot changes them in that way. So, it’s important that it’s consistent. Again, you may have your theme planned out before you start writing, and everything is perfectly plotted around it. Great! You should still read through with a careful eye, making sure each plot beat and point in your character arc are connected through theme in a way that doesn’t feel forced.
Or, you may discover your theme as you write. Also great! Once you’ve reached the end of your draft, you should be able to condense your theme into a single phrase or word. Now you can go through your plot and characters and make sure it all lines up. If your theme is love and your main characters needs to learn to love themselves first (whatever, I know it’s cheesy, go with it), then your character should start out feeling insecure, and the plot should gradually challenge their view of themselves until they’ve changed by the end. They shouldn’t spend the whole story focused on avenging their father’s death, going through a character arc that is begging for the story to end with them realizing the importance of forgiveness, and then at the end suddenly decide they need to love themselves exactly the way they are. It feels forced, and isn’t a satisfying ending the story you’ve actually written.
Setting
Naturally, the setting and worldbuilding part of the story is more prominent in some genres than others. If you’re writing fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction, you’ve probably already put a lot of thought into the setting your characters are interacting with. But even if you’re writing something set in a more modern context that you feel familiar with, you’re still creating a world. In both cases, make sure things are consistent. If you describe the house as one story, your character shouldn’t need to go up any stairs once they get inside. The changing of seasons and days of the week should fit into the world’s rules. Whatever rules you make for your magic shouldn’t shift without a reason. As you’re reading your book, make a note of every detail about the setting. Whether it’s a limitation on how long the spaceship can last in hyperspeed or where the fridge is located, write it down. Then look through the list and make sure nothing contradicts. Refer back to the list as you add more detail about the setting where your story takes place.
Realize that the macro-edit isn’t just a second draft. You’ll likely be in this stage for a while, depending on how much you plotted beforehand. As you tweak one aspect, you may realize that means another area needs to be changed, which means another draft. Don’t freak out! This is just how the editing process goes. Your book is basically a big Jenga tower: when you take out one problem, you discover other weak points that were relying on it. But that means, slowly but surely, you’ll root out all the weaknesses in your manuscript until it’s the strongest it can possibly be.
Which of these four areas do you struggle with the most? Have you gone through a macro-edit yet? Let me know in the comments!
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